10
GRAND RAPIDS BUSINESS JOURNAL
JANUARY 24, 2022
COMMENT & OPINION
GUEST COLUMN Lou Glazer
Region’s employment earnings lag national average
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upport is mounting for emphasizing four-year college degrees in Michigan. In a Crain’s Detroit Business op-ed, Glenn Stevens Jr., executive director of MICHauto, and Britany Affolter-Caine, executive director of Michigan’s University Research Corridor, write: “The most successful strategy to ensure Michigan’s long-term competitiveness and economic prosperity is to increase the number of workers with college degrees and with digital skills in professions at all levels and across all industries in Michigan, while making our communities attractive places to live and work. “Michigan won’t be the prosperous state we envision together without these deeper and more long-term investments. Short-term incentives, while important in the moment, are not going to be enough to get us to where we need to be. Pursuing manufacturing jobs is important, but Michigan also must compete for knowledge-based jobs, which are the ones that are growing in today’s economy. To win knowledge-based jobs, we need to re-invest in higher education, move more university discoveries to market, increase people trained in high-tech at all levels, retain them, and invest in our communities so they are attractive places to live, work and play.” Exactly! Incentives to retain and attract manufacturing jobs cannot be the core strategy to return Michigan to high pros-
perity. Big incentives are the icing on the cake, not the foundation of recreating a Michigan economy with a broad middle class. That is because, as Stevens and Alffolter-Caine note, knowledge-based occupations are now the growing, high-wage occupations. Michigan has a two-tier labor market: one tier of occupations where fewer than 10% of the jobs require a bachelor’s degree and a preponderance of jobs that pay below what it takes to be middle class; and a second tier for occupations where more than 65% of the jobs require a bachelor’s degree and a preponderance of jobs that pay more than what is required to be middle class. These high-wage occupations are: • Architecture and engineering • Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media • Business and financial operations • Community and social service • Computer and mathematical • Educational instruction and library • Health care practitioners and technical • Legal • Life, physical and social science • Management Combined, they account for 33.7% of the nation’s payroll jobs in 2020, which is up from 28.1% in 2000. By contrast, production (blue-collar factory)
jobs have declined from 9.6% of the nation’s payroll jobs in 2000 to 6.1% in 2020. Nationally, the 10 knowledge-based major occupations, with the exception of community and social services, have average wages above the national average of $56,310 for all jobs. Most are substantially above that number. Production has an
average wage that is 25.9% below the average for all jobs. The knowledge-based occupations are 32.8% of Michigan’s payroll jobs. By comparison, they are 42.3% of Massachusetts’ payroll jobs. Massachusetts is the prototypical high-prosperity/high knowledge-based econCONTINUED ON PAGE 11
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GUEST COLUMN Matt Biersack and Diane Henneman
Behavioral health hospital critical to the region
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ercy Health Saint Mary’s and Forest View Hospital have a long history of serving Kent County and surrounding communities with high quality and compassionate behavioral health services, regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. Demand for behavioral health services has been on the rise over the last several years, as our population increasingly struggles with conditions such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance use disorder. Without long-term solutions, the demand will continue to go unmet well after these challenging pandemic times are behind us. In 2020, the Michigan Certificate of Need (CON) program recognized the need for 60 additional inpatient adult psychiatric beds in West Michigan. To make new beds available, the CON program uses a comparative review process designed to award available beds to the organization that presents the most viable strategy for sustainable, long-term access to quality behavioral health care — with an emphasis on serving the Medicaid and un-
derinsured populations. After applying the current CON review standards in the comparative review, the state of Michigan awarded a proposed decision for 60 new adult psychiatric inpatient beds to Havenwyck Hospital, a Michigan subsidiary of Universal Health Services (UHS) and a sister facility of Forest View Hospital. In its proposed decision issued March 29, 2021, the state determined Havenwyck’s CON application satisfied all of the technical requirements to be a qualifying application. It also determined that Havenwyck scored higher than Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services under the established, objective comparative review criteria, including, most notably, Havenwyck’s commitment to serving the greatest number of Medicaid-insured patients. Although the CON decision is under appeal, Havenwyck anticipates a final decision in 2022. To bring further value to the continuum of care via integration of behavioral and medical services, Havenwyck/UHS initiated collaboration discussions with Mercy Health. Together, UHS and Mercy Health developed plans for a new, freestanding
inpatient behavioral health hospital to be built near the Mercy Health Southwest Campus in Byron Center. The facility will accommodate up to 96 beds, which will include the 60 pending adult beds plus 24 additional, already-approved geriatric beds. Programming will be tailored to individual patient needs, with core psychiatric services and counseling supplemented by enrichment activities such as art therapy, music therapy, pet therapy and outdoor activity. The design of the new facility will incorporate today’s modern, evidence-based care elements focusing on patient safety in a warm, healing environment. The new facility will seamlessly tie into a growing network of affiliated behavioral health services in the area, including UHS-operated Forest View Hospital and Mercy Health’s new partnership with Network180 to open a behavioral health crisis
center for the rapid availability of assessment services on a walk-in basis. Further, the new facility will provide additional provider and patient choice in the market, specifically at an easily accessible location south of Grand Rapids. Considerable investment already has been made in planning and development and we are ready to break ground soon after the CON appeal process concludes, and the final decision is confirmed in our favor. We are eager to proceed quickly and without further delays to deliver on our promises for new, enhanced behavioral health services. West Michigan, we know you are counting on us! Matt Biersack, MD, is president and chief medical officer of Mercy Health Saint Mary’s, a member of Trinity Health. Diane Henneman, LCSW, is division vice president, behavioral health, UHS.
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